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Trump official tells coal group he’s ‘an advocate for the coal industry’

A senior Trump administration official in the Energy Department told a coal industry gathering Wednesday that he aims to be a strong advocate for coal.

“The good news is I'm with the federal government and I'm here to help,” Doug Matheney, a special adviser in the Energy Department’s Office of Fossil Energy, said at the West Virginia Mining Symposium, according to S&P Global.

“I went to Washington, D.C., for one purpose and that was to help create coal jobs in the United States. That's my total purpose for being there,” he said. “I’m not a researcher, I'm not a scientist, I'm an advocate for the coal industry.”

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Matheney, who once worked for the industry-backed Count on Coal initiative, told attendees that he hoped to continue Trump’s aggressive deregulatory agenda.

He also said that the Energy Department is working on a new plan to boost coal as a replacement to the failed Federal Energy Regulatory Commission proposal to require higher electricity payments to coal and nuclear power plants.